Category: Life. Don’t talk to me about life.

So a week ago I traded in my Jeep Wrangler for a Chevy Volt. It was a hard decision, but made sense on so many levels. I have a long commute (70 miles round trip), do other road trips, etc. And while I’ll miss being able to bang around in the woods and romp through theRead More

Today I made a hard decision. 8 months ago my venerable VW Passat became unmaintainable. It required a new oil pump, which was going to run around $2000. It had been good for me for 4 years, but with 140,000 miles on it, I was concerned about shoveling more cash into it. I’d always wanted aRead More

It’s no secret. I’ve been a rabid IMAP user for ages and ages and ages. To the point where I’ll keep shifting mail clients around to stay ‘current’. My preferred poison for almost 10 years had been Thunderbird. The tool that started out as a potential replacement for Outlook, but in the end never quite hadRead More

Around mid-November of this year, my boss pulled me aside and said “Son… I’m kickin you outta here.” Okay, he really didn’t say that, but he did let me know if I didn’t take some vacation time by the end of the year, he was going to be cranky. Since my company only rolls over 2Read More

On September 1st, I started what I was calling “my great experiment“. Altering my diet in a significant way to make me more aware of what I was eating, how I was eating, and where my food came from was a huge step for me. So now it’s a week and a half later, howRead More

6-8 months ago I participated in a kickstarter for Soylent – an artificial food mix that is compact, nutritionally complete and storeable. I received my 2 weeks of food on Friday. The cup in this picture contains an entire meal – all the nutrients a body needs to function well. There are people who haveRead More

I tried. I really did try. The book is “The Republic of Thieves” by Scott Lynch, third in the Gentlemen Bastards series. A neighbor had a copy here, and he loaned it to me. I’ve been reading books on my phone for years now. This is the first time I only had a physical copyRead More

A couple months ago, a friend pointed me to the website 23andMe.com. Their mission statement is pretty straightforward. “23andMe’s mission is to be the world’s trusted source of personal genetic information.” Here’s how it works. After signing up online and coughing over my $100, 23andme sent me a small kit. Inside the kit isRead More

It’s interesting working for a music distribution company – our upper management tends to the audiophile / retro-geek crew. Witness our CEO’s office: And the CTO’s office: I do wonder at the massive old-skool speaker stacks and tube amps… in a 15×15 standard drywall office, but it does look sorta neat.

Well that was no fun. For a while, I was in a funk because the Planet-Geek.com site was not posting ANY of my articles. And when I logged into the maintenance pages, I couldn’t see any of my articles for the last year. Now, the site has something like 1600 articles on it. I wasRead More

Thou shalt not release software to production on the eve of a weekend or a holiday. Thou shalt not use corporate email servers to distribute full page pictures of your kitten, or your child, or your horse, or your hamster. Thou shalt not browse porn from your work computer or laptop. Ever. Thou shalt useRead More

This is a brilliant video about 4 folks who decided to cut loose, renovate an old boat, and just plain Leave. [vimeo 15351476 w=400 h=225] Hold Fast from Moxie Marlinspike on Vimeo. Be sure to check out discussion on Boingboing (including some answers from the folks on the boat).

As little as 5 years ago, Six Apart was the undisputed gold leader of blogging platforms. Movable Type was the largest and best known blogging platform, and corporate entities were making moves to acquire competing services. During this time, SixApart launched Vox. The idea was to blend blogging with social networking. Shared questions and trends,Read More

Well THIS will come as a shock to absolutely no one: >Dear Valued Customer, > For the past several months, we’ve been working hard to combine the best features of Quicken Online and Mint.com into a single online personal finance solution–Mint.com. With the improved Mint.com, you can enjoy the features you love in Quicken Online,Read More